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luckgods · 3 years

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Why all the white guys in whump?

I got Inspired by a post asking that question, and here we are. Warning: long post ahead.

I think it’s due to a combination of factors, as things frequently are.

The preference for / prevalence of white male characters in fandom is well-known and has been examined pretty thoroughly by people already.

What’s worth noting for discussing this tendency in whump in particular is that the ‘whump fandom’ itself is not a ‘fandom’ in the traditional sense of being made of fans of one single source narrative (or source setting, like a particular comics fandom, or the Star Wars extended universe) with pre-existing characters. Although subsets of traditional fandoms certainly exist within the larger whump fandom, a lot of whump is based on original, ‘fan’-created characters.

So, given the tendency of ‘traditional’ fandoms to create stories disproportionately centered on white male characters due to the source material itself being centered on white male characters (and giving more narrative weight to them, characterizing them better, etc), if we say hypothetically that the whump fandom is split say 50/50 between ‘traditional’ fandom works and original whump works, you’d expect to see a higher number of works focused on white men than the demographics of the ‘traditional’ fandom’s source work would predict, but not as extreme of a divergence between the source material & the fanworks as the one you’d see if whump fandom were 100% based on popular media.

However, that doesn’t quite seem to be the case. Whump stories and art remain focused on overwhelmingly male and frequently white characters, which means that the tendency of the fandom to create stories disproportionately centered on white male characters cannot be ONLY explained by the source material itself being centered on white male characters (and giving more narrative weight to them, characterizing them better, etc).

And, having established the fact that whump writers & artists presumably have MORE control over the design of their characters than writers & artists in ‘traditional’ fandoms, we have to wonder why the proportions remain biased towards men, & white men in particular.

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The race thing is pretty simple in my opinion. Mostly, it’s just another extension of the fanbase’s tendency to reflect the (predominantly US-American, on tumblr) culture it exists in, which means that, in a white-centric culture, people make artworks featuring white people.

There’s also the issue of artists being hesitant to write works that dwell heavily on violence towards people of color due to the (US-American) history of people of color being violently mistreated. I’ve actually seen a couple of posts arguing that white people SHOULDN’T write whump of nonwhite characters (particularly Black characters) because of the history of actual violence against Black bodies being used as entertainment, which means that fictional violence against Black people, written by white people, for a (presumed) white audience, still feels exploitative and demeaning.

I'm not going to get into all my thoughts on this discussion here but suffice to say that there's probably an impact on the demographics of whump works from authors of color who simply... don't want to see violence against people of color, even non-explicitly-racialized violence, and then another impact from white authors who choose not to write non-white characters either due to the reasons stated above, or simply due to their personal discomfort with how to go about writing non-white characters in a genre that is heavily focused on interpersonal violence.

Interestingly enough, there’s also a decent proportion of Japanese manga & anime being used as source material for whump, and manga-styled original works being created. The particular relationship between US-American and Japanese pop culture could take up a whole essay just by itself so I’ll just say, there’s a long history of US-Japanese cultural exchange which means that this tendency is also not all that surprising.

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GENDER though. If someone had the time and the energy they could make a fucking CAREER out of examining gender in whump, gender dynamics in whump, and why there seems to be a fandom-wide preference for male whumpees that cannot be fully explained by the emphasis on male characters in the source text.

I have several different theories about factors which impact gender preference in whump, and anyone who has other theories (or disagrees with mine) is free to jump in and add on.

THEORY 1: AUTHOR GENDER AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.  Fandom in general is predominantly female, although these days it might be more accurate to say that fandom is predominantly composed of cis women and trans people of all genders. However, pretty much everyone who isn't a cis man has had to contend with the specter of gendered violence in their real personal life. Thus, if we posit whump (and fandom more generally) as a sort of escapist setup, it's not hard to see why whump authors & artists might willfully eschew writing female whumpees (especially in the case of inflicted whump), because (as in the discussion of people of color in whump above), even violence towards women that is explicitly non-gender-based may still hit too close to home for people whose lives have been saturated with the awareness of gender-based violence.

THEORY 2: SICK OF SEXY SUFFERING.  Something of an addendum to theory 1, it's worth noting that depictions of female suffering in popular media are extremely gendered (in that they specifically reflect real-life gender-based violence, and that said real-life violence is almost exclusively referenced in relation to female characters) and frequently sexualized as well. There's only so many times you can see female characters having their clothes Strategically Ripped while they're held captive, being sexually menaced (overtly or implicitly) to demonstrate How Evil the villain is, or just getting outright sexually assaulted for the Drama of it all before it gets exhausting, especially when the narratives typically either brush any consequences under the rug, or dwell on them in a way that feels more voyeuristic and gratuitous than realistic and meaningful. All this may result in authors who, given the chance to write their own depictions of suffering, may decide simply to remove the possibility of gendered violence by removing the female gender.

THEORY 3: AUTHOR ATTRACTION.  I'll admit that this one is more a matter of conjecture, as I haven't seen any good demographic breakdowns of attraction in general fandom or whump fandom. That said, my own experience talking to fellow whump fans does indicate that attraction to the characters (whether whumpers, or whumpees) is part of the draw of whump for some people. This one partially ties into theory 1 as well, in that people who are attracted to multiple genders may not derive the same enjoyment out of seeing a female character in a whumpy situation as they might seeing a male character in that situation, simply because of the experience of gendered violence in their lives.

THEORY 4: ACCEPTABLE TARGETS.  The female history of fandom means that there's been a lot more discussion of the impacts of depicting pain & suffering (especially female suffering) for personal amusement. Thus, in some ways, you could say that there is a mild taboo on putting female characters through suffering if you can't "justify" it as meaningful to the narrative, not just titillating, which whump fandom rarely tries or requires anyone to do. This fan-cultural 'rule' may impact whump writers' and artists' decisions in choosing the gender of their characters.

THEORY 5: AN ALTERNATIVE TO MAINSTREAM MASCULINITY.  Whump fandom may like whumping men because by and large, mainstream/pop culture doesn't let men be vulnerable, doesn't let them cry, doesn't let them have long-term health issues due to constantly getting beat up even when they really SHOULD, doesn't let them have mental health issues period. Female characters, as discussed in theory 2, get to ("get to") go through suffering and be affected by it (however poorly written those effects are), but typically, male characters' suffering is treated as a temporary problem, minimized, and sublimated into anger if at all possible. (For an example, see: every scene in a movie where something terrible happens and the male lead character screams instead of crying). So, as nature abhors a vacuum, whump fandom "over-produces" whump of men so as to fill in that gap in content.

THEORY 6: AMPLIFIED BIAS.  While it's true that whump fandom doesn't have a source text, it's also true that whump fans frequently find their way into the fandom via other 'traditional' fandoms, and continue participating in 'traditional' fandoms as part of their whump fandom activity. Bias begets bias; fandom as a whole has a massive problem with focusing on white male characters, and fans who are used to the bias towards certain types of characters in derivative works absolutely reproduce that bias in their own original whump works.

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I honestly think that there is greater bias in the whump fandom than anyone would like to admit. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems as though whump fans avoid introspection and discussion of the issue by bringing up the points I talked about in my previous theories, particularly discomfort with depictions of female suffering for amusement.

However, I think that, as artists, we owe it to ourselves and one another to engage in at least a small amount of self-interrogation over our preferences, and see what unconscious or unacknowledged biases we possess. It's a little absurd to argue that depictions of women as whumpees are universally too distressing to even discuss when a male character in the exact same position would be fine and even gratifying to the person making that argument; while obviously, people have a right to their own boundaries, those boundaries should not be used to shut down discussion of any topics, even sensitive ones.

Furthermore, engaging in personal reflection allows artists to make more deliberate (and meaningful) art. For people whose goal is simply to have fun, that may not seem all that appealing, but having greater understanding of one's own preferences can be very helpful towards deciding what works to create, what to focus on when creating, and what works to seek out.

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GENDER ADDENDUM: NONBINARY CHARACTERS, NONBINARY AUTHORS.  Of course, this whole discussion so far has been exclusively based on a male-female binary, which is reductive. (I will note, though, that many binary people do effectively sort all nonbinary people they know of into 'female-aligned' and 'male-aligned' categories and then proceed to treat the nonbinary people and characters they have categorized a 'female-aligned' the same way as they treat people & characters who are actually female, and ditto for 'male-aligned'. That tendency is very frustrating for me, as a nonbinary person whose gender has NOTHING to do with any part of the binary, and reveals that even 'progressive' fandom culture has quite a ways to go in its understanding of gender.)

Anyways, nonbinary characters in whump are still VERY rare and typically written by nonbinary authors. (I have no clue whether nonbinary whump fans have, as a demographic group, different gender preferences than binary fans, but I'd be interested in seeing that data.)

As noted above with female characters, it's similarly difficult to have a discussion about representation and treatment of nonbinary characters in whump fandom, and frankly in fandom in general. Frequently, people regard attempts to open discussions on difficult topics as a call for conflict. This defensive stance once again reveals the distaste for requests of meaningful self-examination that is so frequent in fandom spaces, and online more generally.

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TL;DR: Whump is not immune to the same gender & racial biases that are prevalent in fandom and (US-American) culture. If you enjoy whump: ask yourself why you dislike the things you dislike— the answer may surprise you. If you create whump: ask yourself whose stories you tell, and what stories you refuse to tell— then ask yourself why.

#eposting #whumpinions #whump #whumpblr #whump community #essay #i wrote this so yall all have to read it lol #but seriously the next person who implies that a nonbinary person is just 'woman-lite' or 'man-lite' is going to Die By My Fucking Sword #mine

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bluerosesburnblue · 5 years

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Heyo! I'm the pro-shipper anon from before, I really enjoyed reading your response! And yeah, what happened to that anon was... Bad. Anyway, your response got me thinking about this post I read not too long ago about canon vs word of god and how things like the author saying things outside of canon and cast interviews and such should not be taken as canon because of a ton of reasons, including the escalation of bullying in fandom and how it leads to poor representation

Hey! Glad to hear it! I know I kind of went off on a tirade, but I felt it was warranted in this scenario. Really hope that anon’s doing alright now and that they get to see that there’s some people out there who support them

And you’re absolutely right! I saw a YouTube video once about how that ties into the Harry Potter fandom, specifically, too. I find literary analysis fascinating (and… took a lot of classes on it in college…) which is, probably, why I’m such a stickler for using the terms properly

The distinction between canon and Word of God is always important to keep in mind when looking at a work. After all, there’s benefit to examining things from different angles. What does the text say vs. what the author says after it’s released? Do the two match? Does the text read one way and the author’s thoughts on their own work read another way?

That’s not to discount authorial intent entirely. Of course authors are entitled to thoughts regarding their own work and those thoughts give new context to the piece at hand. But authors are also human, and therefore, biased. Not always in the negative sense of the word, but one person is only ever able to truly experience the world from their own perspective, no matter how much research they do. It’s a very neutral thing, but also one to consider

Frequently, authors may think that something they implied was obvious only to find that no one but them was able to figure out what they were saying. Or they may find that something had connotations that they hadn’t considered at all. Some just use Word of God as a way to state what they were thinking but intentionally leave it open to interpretation in the text. Sometimes they change their minds after the fact because, again, they’re human. Regardless, once something’s out there it’s now divorced from the author’s mind and left up to the thousands or millions of minds that see it afterwards, each of whom comes in with their own unique little life experiences that figuratively paint in the lines that the author laid down

There’s merit to separating the author from the text. There’s merit to comparing and contrasting the two. But I think it’s important to understand the difference between them. To know where the author’s thoughts on the subject end and where your own begin

That applies to any creative. Authors, actors, singers/songwriters/composers, artists, game writers and developers… once that work is in the public it’s out of their hands

Or at least, it used to be. Nowadays, declaring something as “canon” has sort of become a way for people to try and assert their own reading as “correct,” and they’ll use any “source” no matter how tangentially tied to the product it is to justify it. It’s kind of ruining the magic of art, to be honest

The video I mentioned made the argument that this trend might have even started with JK Rowling, who was one of the first popular authors to be accepting and supporting of fanworks. Previously, authors could be very controlling of their works post-publication, and this was widely ignored by fandom. The separation of authorial intent and canon was more clearly defined. But JK made herself approachable to the fanbase, and so they started asking her questions regarding her work and she was happy to answer. And they were happy to accept her answers, and to just be acknowledged by their favorite author. Once people realized that that was an effective way to build a fanbase for your work, they started getting in on it. The advent of social media only made it easier to get in contact with your favorite creatives and ask them what their opinion of the subject was

This snowballed into what we have today. People stopped appreciating their own interpretations of a work because they could just ask someone who they felt had more authority on the subject what they had intended. The author’s word started gaining more and more importance until it was eventually seen as being equal to the text

And then people started realizing the problems with that. Because yeah, it definitely started leading to bullying and poor representation

Because why bother actually researching a controversial topic when you can say afterwards that a character was [X] minority and get just as much credit without having to worry about any of the backlash for potentially portraying it poorly? When people will just applaud you for being so inclusive while you sit there and spend zero effort on properly researching and interviewing the people you’re claiming to represent? And then that becomes a trend

Luckily, that one’s starting to get some flack if the reactions to JK’s Twitter are anything to go by. But the bullying problem is still unfortunately very prevalent. People take their media seriously. They put a whole part of themselves into the experience, and they make it unique. Well-written works make you feel like the character’s lived experiences are your own. There’s a good reason why the concept of fandom is as big as it is

But in the age of social media, it’s also very easy to find people who disagree with you, even accidentally. And in a way, given how deeply some people get invested in fiction, that can feel like a personal attack. And, ironically enough, it depersonalizes the opposition because you can’t see their face or hear their tone most of the time. And so people feel threatened, they get protective of “their canon,” and they look to an authority to defend them

And 9 times out of 10, that author or actor or whoever has no idea of the context they’re being asked this under, so they agree with the fan who asked because they’re legitimately trying to be supportive of the fanbase. And that answer gets used as a weapon. Or sometimes it backfires on the original asker and the other side now gets to use it as a weapon. And the vicious cycle repeats

I’d say “I could write a whole essay on the subject” but uhhhh… oops? Anyway, yes. Canon, fanon, Word of God, authorial intent, Death of the Author… all important things to know the proper definitions of when discussiong creative works. I think if people did there’d be less fighting in fandom, just in general. Then, hopefully, it could become a group of appreciation for shared things that make us happy and respect for the differences in each person’s life that they bring to the table instead of… the actual mess it’s become, you know?

#liz answers #anon asks #long post

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